


Remembrance

by TasheryS



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1994-02-28
Updated: 1994-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-31 20:48:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TasheryS/pseuds/TasheryS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally published in the fanzine <a href="http://fanlore.org/wiki/Evasive_Maneuvers">Evasive Maneuvers</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remembrance

Blake paused at the entrance to the flight deck.   Now that they had Orac, it meant access to unlimited information on Control, and for the first time, a chance at a strike against the very heart of the Federation.  For the next few hours, he wanted the super-computer entirely to himself.  Lights flashed by the couch, and as his eyes adjusted from the bright white of the corridor to the amber cavern of the flight deck, he saw Orac on its stand -- but he also saw Avon.  Back turned, the computer expert knelt before the auto-navigation unit, tools lined up neatly as a surgeon's instruments.  In his deep concentration he did not seem to have heard Blake's approach.  Avon was the last one Blake wanted discovering his intentions.  He considered carrying Orac off to his own cabin, but that would rouse Avon's curiosity quicker than anything else.  Any access code he could devise, Avon could get past.  And would, if it suited him.  Better to wait and see if Avon's work would soon be done, or if he also wanted to be alone and would leave when Blake stayed.  That tactic had worked before.

Blake descended the steps.  "Zen, display a full status check at the pilot's position."

+Confirmed.+

Avon turned his head, his reserved expression giving no clue whether he regarded this as an intrusion or not.

Blake leaned back in the pilot's seat, giving his superficial attention to the figures Zen sent to the screen.  At the edge of his vision he saw Avon detach something from the auto-navigator and sit back on his heels to inspect it.  He could not see Avon's face, but he could imagine both elegant brows slightly lifted in quizzical interest, the precisely shaped lips relaxed into a trace of smile from which, even now, the irony would not be totally absent.  Happy at his arcane fiddling as he never was with people.  Wondering if he could catch Avon unaware in his contentment, Blake shifted his focus, but at the same moment Avon leaned forward to put the component back in place, and all Blake saw was the curve of his back against the black fabric of his shirt, and the black leather snug over his thigh, accentuating the trim, round buttocks.  Instead of Control, he found himself considering Avon's recent penchant for wearing leather.  With rarely even a button undone, Avon always achieved in his clothing a formality that put up a subtle, but unmistakable barrier.  Yet, the aggressive sensuality of that leather was no doubt just as fully intended.  Avon was too sophisticated not to be aware of its implications.  When he had first showed up on the flight deck so tightly encased, yet so wickedly flaunting every line of his calves and thighs, Blake was amused.  He was also, even more than before, secretly envious of the other man's taut, graceful body.  But he had too many important things on his mind to waste much thought on it.  Avon forced him to spend too much of his efforts on petty games as it was.  Yet, he did notice when Avon escalated to leaving off the tunic, revealing a bulge at the crotch so suggestive that Cally and Jenna exchanged appreciative, quizzical glances.  Cally was the target of this display, Blake assumed.  Not that Avon behaved any differently around her than ever, but it would be like Avon to entice, then play hard to get, making her declare all the need, all the caring, while he gave only what suited his caprice.

Blake didn't like it.  Not that he couldn't understand Avon being attracted to Cally.  Her gentle, fierce courage was a more than worthy inspiration for love -- if Avon was capable of love.  Normally, Blake would have considered the whole thing none of his business.  But this time, he might have to put a stop to it.  Avon disrupted the balance of the crew too much as it was.  He must not destroy it.

In fairness, he pondered again whether his annoyance wasn't just envy because his own relationship with Jenna had soured.  He could still have it, if he wanted.  Jenna expected him to show up at her cabin door sooner or later with a flask of wine and an apologetic smile, as he had done before.  Maybe he would.  Irritating as he found her possessiveness, he did admire her undaunted spirit, and enjoyed her sexual directness.  He liked a partner who knew exactly what she wanted in bed.  It carried him through the terrifying moments when the fragmented, fleeting memories brushed him, only to evade his grasp, stripping the present from him and spiralling him down into the void.  Jealous of past attachments as well as present ones, Jenna never probed with inconvenient questions.  She made sure his attention remained with the present, and her.  He was thankful for that.  He dreaded the reminders of how much of his past was lost in that hollow emptiness.  And he could not risk revealing it to his crew.  His memories of the events since the treatments were intact, and his grasp on present realities, unaffected.  His crew had no reason to doubt his ability to lead.  If he were not capable, he would never have taken on such a crucial responsibility.  Yet, he feared that if they realized how large the gaps still were, they would doubt.  Especially Avon.

Perhaps, he admitted, watching the readout scroll up the screen, his unease over Avon was more than concern for Cally or the dynamics of the crew.  Perhaps, he resented anything else that might claim Avon's attention.  If he could not have Avon's commitment to the fight against the Federation, he needed his total involvement.  Until XK 72, he had not realized how precarious his hold over Avon was.  He did not know what had nearly snapped then, why Avon had suddenly, for no real reason, abandoned Liberator, but he knew nothing had changed since then, and that Avon might desert again, this time for good.  More than any other member of his crew, he needed Avon.  Without him the Liberator's effectiveness was cut in half.  _Yes,_ he told himself, _that's all it is, the old problem.  Somehow, I must make sure of Avon._

An uneasy sensation filtered into his consciousness.  The certainty he was watched.  Frowning, Blake glanced down front again, but Avon was ignoring him, poking rather maliciously at something with a laser probe.  His hair shone rich mahogany in the muted lights, and a slight curl where it overlapped his collar looked incongruously soft.

Blake grimaced at the irrelevance of that observation.  Since their first meeting on the London, he had been peculiarly aware of Avon.  Of course, there were good reasons.  The man's computer skills had made all the difference to their chances of escape.  Winning his cooperation had posed a challenge, yet, despite Avon's opportunism, from the beginning Blake had felt unaccountably close to him.  Avon was an exasperating, rewarding enigma of a man, of all people the one he would most like to call friend.  But until now, he would not have labelled his contradictory feelings about Avon _fascination_.

He would not say _sexual_ fascination.  Unlike most Alphas, Blake was not bisexual.  Aside from the simple fact that he responded to women and not men, bisexuality was a class trait that set Alphas apart from the less sophisticated masses.  They flaunted it before the Betas, Gammas and Deltas, most of whom formed relationships exclusively with either one sex or the other, and were socially conditioned to find the chameleon behavior of their superiors inexplicable and intimidating.  It was just one more way the Federation put the haves and have-nots at odds to prevent them uniting against the real problem.  Blake wanted no part of Alpha elitism, out of bed or in.

Leather flowed over the backs of Avon's thighs like supple skin as he leaned forward to examine whatever he had done.  Odd, how his quick, taut grace gave the impression of a slight build, when actually he was only a little smaller than Blake, more slender, but his back solid beneath the black cloth, the muscles revealed by the leather compact and strong.  That leather must feel as softly sensuous against his skin as a kid glove.  Warmed by his body, it would give off its warm, heady scent, mingled with the faint, clean musk of Avon's body.  Sometimes, standing near him, Blake was aware of that subtle scent.  It pleased, and yet sharply disturbed him.  It conjured up something else . . . someone else.  He felt his nostrils flaring as if he could catch it from here.  Then he realized what he was doing, frowned and watched the systems check on the screen.

That was it.

Avon's scent, even some indefinable quality in Avon's grace.  Avon -- of all people -- somehow reminded him of Lindra.

Stunned, Blake sank back, relieved and electrified by the revelation.  This recent fascination with Avon was not some sudden, unaccountable obsession with a man -- with Avon of all men.  Once more, it was the enigmatic, unattainable memory of Lindra haunting him.  During his year on the Liberator, her elusive ghost had grown gradually stronger as fragmented bits of his memory slowly -- too agonizingly slowly -- returned.

Until acquiring Orac, Lindra was only a first name, the soft caress of a slender hand across his face, a few bright moments shining out of the void.  But they would not take shape or sequence, their beauty remained as broken as the shards of a shattered mirror.  Desperately though he tried, he could not even remember her face.  When he struggled to, only grief for an indefinable loss filled him.  One of the few things he did know was that Lindra was gone beyond recovery.  At least, Orac had now confirmed her spectre with a few solid facts.  Lindra Sunders had been a technician aboard a space liner, but on Earth occupied a flat in Blake's residence complex.  Presumably, that was how they met.  Her intelligence rating was extremely high, she had never married, and there was no record she had ever been suspected of any subversive activity.  That tallied with the little he remembered.  Lindra had known of his political involvement, even shared his beliefs.  But fear kept her from joining his fight.  He remembered, too, how she had feared for him.  So instead of dying for her beliefs, Lindra had died a pointless, hideously slow death in a space accident.  Since she was not in the resistance, his treatments had not been aimed at eradicating her memory from his mind, but they left it as mutilated as the accident left her body.  For that second murder of her, he would never forgive them.  Though he recalled her so imperfectly, his tender grief at the slightest thought of her told him she was the greatest treasure life had ever given him.  Or ever would.  He would never again be capable of loving like that.  At the most, he could love enough to remember the reasons for the destruction and death he must cause.

Why Avon should arouse memories of Lindra was a total mystery.  Blake was certain she had been blond and tanned from her time off-world, not Avon's dark and pale, and her voice, soft as the brush of velvet against his ear, had none of Avon's superior, nasal precision.  Yet besides the leather scent and alert grace, there had been a certain irony . . .  Blake glanced at Avon's back.  A trace of sour amusement struck him at how irritated the computer expert would be if he knew he reminded Blake of a former flame.

\-- Or would he?  Avon, the archetypal Alpha, was probably bisexual.  The wayward impulse Blake had just felt to stroke that smoke-dark, smoke-soft hair, might even pique a perverse interest in him.  Avon often gave off hints that for him, aggression and sex were closely linked.  Blake imagined Avon turning to his touch, those cool eyes leaping to a darker heat, but this time not in anger.  With shocking vividness an image leapt at him of Avon's fury transformed, the sculpted lips parted, and hot, panting breath burning his shoulder.  Reeling with the unexpected force of it, Blake was assaulted by nausea, and alarm.

Avon glanced over his shoulder.

Forcing himself steady Blake returned the inscrutable gaze levelly.  Uneasy what his own face might have revealed, he took the offensive.  "Is it wise to tear down the navigator while we're so close to Federation space?"

For some reason known only to himself, Avon smiled.  "Navigation unit is completely functional, and has been all the while I've been working."  Calm, but with a dangerous edge.  Blake vehemently hoped it was only at having his judgement questioned.

And if it was more?  Often, Blake had the feeling Avon waited in ambush for him.  But what was he waiting for?  So he could do what?  Blake did not know, only that for a year the man's vigilance had been constant, and merciless.

And if he did not know, he could guess.  The small slip that would prove Avon's suspicions.  Evidence that his memory gaps were severe enough to affect his judgement.  Or, something the man could twist into the semblance of proof.  A vehement non-believer, Avon must not lose the possibility of belief.  If ever did, he would abandon the struggle, and the Liberator.

Because whatever Avon might pretend, he was struggling.  Blake knew, he had always known, that though Avon's real struggle was not against him, he had come to represent for Avon everything the man struggled against, and for.

As if he did not care whether Avon took offense or not, Blake turned back to the screen.

Indulging this perverse fascination was insane.  If Avon discovered it, bisexual or not, wouldn't he be delighted with such a wonderful opportunity to coolly, ironically, shred him to bits!  No, thank you.  The Federation was destructive enough without allowing self-destructive impulses.  More than most, Blake knew that chaos within was as dangerous as an attack from without.  Armed offensives were not enough.  Federation psycho-manipulators rarely destroyed their victims; instead they made an art of pressuring the victims to destroy themselves.  Some few of the strong, like Avalon, like Kasabi, like himself, must not only lead, they must hold out hope.  They must prove by example that a constructive way of life was not only worth fighting for, but _possible_.

Blake sighed and focused past the screen.  Avon was closing the auto-navigation compartment.  Without a glance at Blake he gathered his tools and ascended the steps, leaving Blake at last alone with Orac.  Blake went down to the couch, where he could confer quietly with the computer.  He had many factors to consider before deciding his best strategy for attacking Control.

He glanced over his shoulder.  Avon was not there.  He had really gone.  Blake wondered where.

±

The throb of Liberator's drives, scarcely felt though it was, often kept Avon awake.  Resigning himself to another bout of insomnia, he turned onto his back, his best position for nocturnal thinking.

He wondered what Blake had been up to in the flight deck, running through that unnecessary systems check.  Almost certainly, he had some intention he did not want to reveal.  A task for Orac, most likely.  Probably he was researching Central Control again.

On Blake's arrival, Avon had been finishing his own work.  He had only drawn it out to frustrate Blake, and see if he would show his hand.  The first objective was easily accomplished, but impatient though Blake obviously was, he had stubbornly refused to oblige Avon in the second.  The memory of that thwarted determination made Avon smile into the darkness.

Then, he had caught Blake staring again.  This time, his arousal was unmistakable.  Hiding his triumph had not been easy, and concealing the swift answer of his own desire, more difficult.  Yet he had concealed it.  Again, he had done nothing.

Because he wanted Blake far too much.

Enough to disregard every promise he had made himself when he had found Blake, of all people, on board the London with him.  When he realized his best chance of escape was to join Blake, he swore to himself it was only temporary, that he would not let himself become involved in any way.  But the Liberator's alien technology had offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  He had stayed, but only to gain knowledge he could sell for a high price.  That was still his plan, eventually.  Blake was a danger.  He always had been.

Four years before the Liberator, before the bank swindle, before Anna, he had spent night after night pacing his flat, reminding himself exactly how dangerous Blake was.  Even after Blake's release, he had known there could be no future with him.  And no flirtation, ever again, with believing.

From the first, Blake drew him against his will.

He joined the Aquitar Project because the vast puzzle of re-imaging data intrigued him.  The physicists', biologists' and design engineers' changing theories required frequent consultations.  Engineering chose Blake as their liaison because he was that rare beast, an structural designer who could communicate verbally.  Preferring not to be bothered by social blather, Avon made no effort to be gracious to any of his co-workers.  All the same, Blake began dropping by when no meeting was necessary.  He was not the typical too-friendly type.  Though his habit of gnawing his finger was irritating, his reserve about his personal life was refreshing, and their theoretical conversation were actually rather interesting.  But in Avon's experience, people did not make so much effort unless they wanted something.  Such persistence meant one of two things:  either Blake had some scheme and wanted his expertise, or the man was working up to a sexual proposition.  If his intentions were sexual, Avon was not interested.  Slender, elegant grace combined with cutting wit was his taste, in either sex.  Solid, resolute earth did not arouse his lust.  However, if it was a scheme, Blake thought big, and his ideas might be worth hearing.  Therefore, when the engineer suggested they continue a discussion after hours at his flat, Avon agreed.

He was amused to find Blake's flat untidy and comfortably scuffed, its easy chairs the same earthy browns and greens that Blake wore.  As the man began to talk, however, Avon's temptation to smile disappeared.  "Why are you interested in CYCLOPS?" he asked warily.  "That system isn't used on research or commercial computers."

"I know," Blake answered evenly.  "It's used on people."

"In reorientation facilities.  The CYCLOPS programs are for indoctrination, there's no information there worth selling."

"True." Blake's voice, low with intensity, seemed to reverberate from every wall.

What was this man's angle?  Surely, he was too intelligent to be planning some sort of political action.  If so, making it known to a comparative stranger was so foolish Avon would have suspected the man was a security agent testing his own loyalty. The safest response was to report the man.

"We've been conducting raids, releasing prisoners, getting them to a community of Outsiders willing to give shelter and help, but by then the damage is often done," Blake urged.  "Damage it may take years to undo.  Imagine if we could stop the destruction at its source.  Worth selling, you say?  What about worth in human lives, in the freedom of human minds?"

"What, sabotage the psycho-manipulation programs?" Avon made his voice cutting.  "They would only strengthen their security and rebuild the program.  At most you would delay them for a month."

Blake's eyes shone with triumph.  " _If_ they discover the tampering.  But we have a specialist who has devised a temporary, harmless form of hypnosis.  It will mimic the CYCLOPS effects so exactly their own experts won't know the difference."

So Blake had always spoken, then.  _We_ , not _I_.  Avon remembered all too well his irresistible enthusiasm, its glow like a physical warmth.  Only its ghost survived in the grim, overbearing determination that drove him now.

"Before we can tamper with the indoctrination, the system's security must be cracked, of course.  We don't have the expertise.  No one who knows our intentions does."

For his fervor, Avon returned icy detachment.  "Until now."

"Until now."  Blake's stillness was not patience, but acute suspense.  So acute that Avon found himself convinced Blake was no agent.  He meant exactly what he said.

"No."

"Why not?"  Blake shifted forward.  "Afraid you can't do it?"

Avon smiled his contempt for that ploy.  "You assume I want the Federation to fall.  Why should I, when it provides so many opportunities?"

"For whom?  The political prisoners who at this very moment are having their minds shredded like paper?"  Blake leaned forward with an intensity so personal that Avon pressed back in his chair.  Yet even as he recoiled, he could not resist watching the man with unwilling fascination.  Fire suited Blake.  Alight with dignity and compassion, his face transformed from ordinary to memorable, ignited by the bright force of his will, his eyes at once troubled and shining under the persuasive arches of his brows.  He might be a fool, but he had courage.

Despite every rational consideration, Avon felt the man's spell insinuating into his cynicism, dragging from him a reluctant admiration, and a temptation to speculate . . .  Not liking it, he sat aggressively forward.  "How do you know I won't simply inform the administration?"

"I've been watching you for months, Avon.  I've chosen you very carefully."

Anger quickened.  "Watching me?  Indeed?"

"Don't play the Federation partisan with me.  For weeks, you've signalled in a dozen subtle ways that you're open to approach."

  "I thought you were about to offer some scheme to make us rich."  Feeling ridiculous in his mistake, Avon counter-attacked with stinging mockery.  "That, or try to lure me into your bed."

Blake looked the way Avon felt when some random factor blew apart weeks of careful programming.  "You can relax, this is no seduction."

"Isn't it?" Avon aimed another barb.

"Do you want it to be?"  The sudden quiet of Blake's voice was a vortex.

To his dismay, Avon felt a familiar dryness in his mouth, an unmistakable pressure at the base of his cock.  He glared at Blake.  This man was too dangerous.  Not only to those who joined his cause.  Mere association with him could lead to interrogation, deportation, at the very least prevent clearance for the high security positions where the real opportunities were.  "You imagine it might induce me to become your loyal comrade in arms?"  He emphasized the last words, chilling the innuendo with frigid irony.

Blake paused, but only briefly.  Then he met Avon's eyes with openness.  "It has occurred to me I might like that," he admitted.  He looked for a moment longer, then shrugged.  "All right, let's forget it was ever mentioned."  Pacing across the room, Blake resumed, "The important issue is that resisters who are vital to our work, effective, dedicated people, are being destroyed in those indoctrination facilities.  With your expertise, we can save them."

The man's undaunted will filled the air with subtle, invisible threads of flame that slid over Avon's skin.  Prompted by some perverse demon within, he answered, "You've chosen the wrong one."

"What?"

"You made two offers.  You are pursuing the wrong one."

Blake faced Avon.  Whatever he saw made one eyebrow go up in a peak that made Avon burn to fuck the smugness out of him.  "Am I?"

Furious at Blake, at himself, Avon closed the distance between them.  Pushing his swelling cock against the other man's thigh, he hissed, "Yes.  You are.  Now, do you want this," he thrust against the tense thigh, "or do you want me to go?"

"Those are my choices?"  Blake's voice was angry, but the eyes that locked with his challenged.  The thigh rubbed him, making him gasp.

That first night Avon told himself his fury of desire was only a momentary whim.  He played the aggressor, wanting Blake to fight him for control.  Obviously a natural leader and fighter, Blake would surely not enjoy being overwhelmed, even with pleasure.  Yet he accepted every delicious outrage Avon devised.  Avon leaned over him on the bed, passing his palms over the smooth skin of Blake's chest, taking in the muscle under the skin and sounding the will that dwelt there.  The rebel answered by relaxing to his probing touch.  Avon knew the man could not be unaware of his anger, yet he ignored it, offering friendly pleasure with a complacency Avon found particularly irritating, and refusing to struggle for control.  So Blake was deliberately playing with him?  The man really did imagine that if stirring speeches couldn't entrap him, sex could.  Avon gave him a smile that was anything but friendly.  Though returning his gaze with the same directness, Blake tensed slightly.

"Fuck you, Blake," Avon said quietly.  With his tongue he traced his way across the broad, smooth chest to Blake's nipple.  He lashed the soft flesh until it tightened, then closed his teeth sharply and precisely on the raised bud.  Blake started, and made a slight move to push him away, but Avon pressed hard on his chest, keeping the raised center of the nipple between his teeth.  He continued sucking what must by now be a painfully sensitive spot, slowly and teasingly, then fast and hard.  Blake's hands closed in his hair, whether asking him to stop or for more he couldn't tell.  Avon raised to look into his opponent's eyes.  Offering a clear admission of his pleasure, Blake reached to rub his nipple in return, but Avon caught his wrist.  With deliberate slowness he leaned down and began stroking Blake not with his hands but with his cock.

"I suspected there was more hidden beneath that proper exterior than mere, cold greed."  Blake reached for him with the other hand.

Avon caught that wrist, too.  "Do you mistake this for anything but mere, hot greed?"  Kneeling over Blake, he pinned both arms with his legs, and thrust his hips, taking his own cock in his hand and stroking his opponent's cheek with the tip.  He travelled up the side of his face, over the appealing, infuriating arches of his eyebrows, along the broad forehead to the crisp, tickling softness of his curls.  With insulting, promising intimacy, he took possession of each contour that pleased him, lightly grazing the closed eyes, over the cheek to the ear, down to the softness of the mouth.  Blake opened his lips.

Avon took his cock away.

Both eyes opened, focusing on his, a challenge.

Smiling slightly, Avon shook his head in refusal.

Blake grimaced slightly, more to himself than to Avon.  It deepened Avon's suspicion that this was a battle in his adversary's mind as well as his.  Possibly, he had mistaken revolutionary fervor for desire, and Blake did not really want him at all, not sexually.  If he was being tolerated, he would have his revenge for that humiliation.  Not only would he use his would-be user, he would make the man want more use than he would give him.  Taking hold of Blake's cock, Avon coaxed with his palms, his fingers and thumbs, using all his considerable expertise until Blake's sex stood erect, the thick shaft straining, the large, rather bulky head flushed.  "Yes," Blake admitted what his cock already proclaimed, and beneath the acquiescence, his quick breathing betrayed his impatience for more.  Satisfied that the man's response to his skill, at least, was real, Avon held Blake's gaze, applying a more insistent pressure to each sensitive spot he had found, on the underside, around the rim.  Blake closed his eyes and raised his hips, making it plain this was no martyrdom to his cause.

Now Avon had what he wanted.  Pure, abandoned desire.  Despite all ulterior motives, Blake did want him.  Yet now that he could enjoy it, he resisted his own urgency as well as the other man's.  Pausing, he savored their mutual torment. Such denials gave him a pleasure almost as intense as taking what he wanted,  Blake made a small, demanding grunt, twisting under him.  That Blake did not take pleasure in the frustration made it exquisite.  With sardonic amusement Avon watched stubbornness come over his opponent's face.  A decision to battle for his own pleasure after all.  And the intention to win.  Avon smiled.  He surrounded the tip of Blake's cock with a swirl of lips and tongue, taking his adversary by surprise.  With a  startled sound Blake tried to enter further, but Avon closed his teeth on the rigid member, giving warning.  Eyes closed, he felt the body beneath him twist, caught between delight and pain.  Gradually, Avon increased his sucking, at the same time biting harder.  The powerful thighs tensed on either side of his head, but it was impossible to tell if the man was being obstinate, or if he was not certain himself whether pleasure predominated, or discomfort.  Irresistibly curious to find out, Avon let go with his teeth and drew him in to the hilt, stroking with his tongue.  With an incoherent sound of relief and eagerness, Blake took Avon's head between his hands.  Avon sucked rhythmically, his own cock throbbing to the low hum Blake made in his pleasure.  Blake's fingers moved through his hair, half-closed eyes heavy with desire, but also with caution.  Good.  Avon would not have this mistaken for anything but the callous lust it was -- on both sides.  Tonguing the loose fullness of Blake's balls aside, Avon licked the taut stretch of skin to the puckered opening, and heard the other man take a sharp breath.  Strong fingers closed on his shoulders, urging him.  "Kerr--"

Avon didn't like him using his first name.  This man was no friend of his.  _Fuck you, Blake,_ he thought, far more vehemently than before.  _Fuck your transparent manipulations_.  Moistening his finger, he rubbed the little creases radiating from the opening, preparing the man to be entered.  Involuntarily the ring of muscle drew tighter around his fingertip, then relaxed to his coaxing.  "Yes," his opponent repeated, giving consent where Avon asked none.  He blew on it and watched it contract, his own sex throbbing in urgent anticipation of that tightness, and the hot, moist clasp of the passage within.

"In the bathroom cabinet," Blake told him, and moved his legs apart, giving him room to rise.

Blake's first off-hand order.  Avon smiled ironically at the memory.  Following it had seemed no concession then, considering what he would gain.  Avon went to the adjoining bathroom, conscious of Blake studying his body with appreciation.  The top of the tube stuck at first, as if it had not been used recently.  As he returned, the rebel propped himself on his elbows, watching him with frank desire.

Which did not quite hide his hope.

A trace of sadness startled Avon.  Alarmed at himself, he sat on the bed, looking down at his intended source of pleasure, this near-stranger and antagonist. "Do you prefer lying on your stomach, or your back?" he asked, covering his vulnerability with silky menace, making it a threat no matter which position Blake chose.

Instead of answering, Blake held his gaze.  His eyes, their agate brown, were steady, imperturbable.  "First," he answered, "I'd like to kiss you again."  Opening his mouth to refuse, Avon felt the strong arms bending him forward.  He let Blake draw him close, let Blake's lips open his, but if Blake must have this kiss, made it not lying tenderness but a counter-attack, probing deeper, possessing the lips and tongue that had invaded his mouth.  It was Blake who withdrew, then lay on his stomach, his expression also withdrawn.  The dangerous sadness threatened Avon again.  _He only means to use you,_ he reminded himself.  _Use him first, and have done with him_.

Welcoming the fury that answered this knowledge, he denied Blake the position he had chosen, turning him over, grasping the larger man's calves and raising them to his shoulders, until only Blake's shoulders and head were on the bed, the brown curls crushed against the pillow, his buttocks vulnerable to the deepest penetration.  Instead of fighting, Blake said evenly, "Opposing everything I do?  Isn't that a rather _transparent_ tactic for a man of your intelligence?"  But it was bravado.  His widened eyes betrayed his alarm.  Returning the steady gaze arrogantly, Avon leaned forward, gripping the powerful thighs, with Blake's ankles over his shoulders, parting the solid buttocks to expose darker skin that opened enticingly, revealing more curls, and the deliciously defenseless opening.  "I don't want a contest," Blake urged, his whisper low.  "I want only you."

"You expect me to believe that?" Avon denied, in wonder at the fever that flashed through every nerve.

"Believe what you like.  It's true."  Breathing quickly, unevenly, Blake raised himself, the cleft in his buttocks nuzzling Avon's cock.

If he insisted on an answering declaration, Avon gave it the only way he could.  Pressing to that tantalizing entrance, he made a swift, shallow thrust, and felt the portal of the other man's body yield, and tightly clasp him.  Hissing in pleasure, Avon withdrew, and poised himself on the brink, tip lightly touching.  Again he paused there, feeling sweat break out on his forehead, dizzy as if he hovered on the edge of an abyss.

Yet, this foolish idealist was nothing so special.  Once possessed, he would lose his novelty.  Reassured, Avon plunged in again.  The hot, moistened passage eased to receive him, then tightened to grip him.  Blake groaned, but the sound turned to a protest as he drew out.  Eyes shut, Avon traced the strong thigh and groin to the rigid sex.  Closing his hand around it, he pumped until Blake writhed beneath him.  Only then did he sheath himself again in the hot, satiny passage, feeling the response of the other's vigorous flesh and will compel him yet deeper into the abyss of their desire.  It was a dark place, full of nameless hungers, with this man's scent in his nostrils, like the unspoilt, leafy breeze outside the city dome, the crimson within his closed eyelids tinged with the shooting lights of an ecstasy between nostalgia and fear, a fleeting illusion of childhood and freedom, of possibilities, of the chance to begin anew.  _Delusions_ , he told himself silently, yet he caressed this stranger, knowing the man's foolish, dangerous dreams stirred this in him, and that it was beautiful, this intimacy beyond distrust, or caution, or differences.

Blake made a deep, resonant sound, and moved with him, their rhythm joining into a sharing yet more intimate.  Clasping Blake's cock, Avon plunged deeper toward the light until he felt the spasms around him, a flaring of light into the black emptiness.  The warm semen spilled over his hand as he loosed the nova of his own climax into Blake's body.  Drained, he sank down, his cheek against Blake's chest, his sex still embraced by the sheltering warmth.

Avon woke abruptly to find himself being gathered in the larger man's arms.  He had let down his guard too far.  He had not meant to sleep.  Deprived of its haven, his sex felt chilled and damp, and Blake's massive arm was uncomfortable under his shoulder.

"You amaze me."  Blake stroked the contour of his hip.  "True, you're a complicated man, but I never imagined this.  I want more of it."

"What, now?" Avon asked in mock exasperation.

Blake laughed, an easy, contented sound.  "I'd never survive two onslaughts like this in one night.  Later this week would be nice, though."  He closed his arms, trapping Avon within them.

"Not possible."

"Or next week.  You name the time."

But it was not that simple.  Whatever he felt in the heat of passion, this crusader would never stop trying to convert, to manipulate, to control.  "Can't you understand 'no'?"

Blake released him.  "I thought this meant something to you.  My mistake."  He made no attempt to hide his hurt.  Or his anger.  In those days, Blake rarely attempted to hide his emotions.

In the privacy of his cabin, Avon closed his eyes.  "It did mean something to me," he whispered to the darkness, as he had not, then.  Far too much.  That had been why it was necessary to turn away from Blake immediately, and completely.  And still was.  In a year or two at most, Blake would be dead.  Avon had no intention of dying with him.

Usually, when he made a decision, he carried it out relentlessly.  He must still work with Blake on the Aquitar Project, but that should have made no difference.  It was irritating to begin a technical discussion with the engineer, withdrawn and impervious, only to find himself matching wits with the man and enjoying it immensely.  Sometimes he imagined another discreet evening might be possible, even worth the risk.  The trouble was, he had not really made a decision about Blake, and Blake knew it.  As if in a planned campaign, which no doubt it was, Blake launched the next phase.  Thinking himself alone, Avon felt a sudden warm breath by his ear, detailing in a low, blood-stirring whisper exactly what Blake wanted to do to Avon's cock, his mouth, his arse.  Avon froze, flame creeping up the backs of his thighs and gathering in his balls.  But then Blake was gone.

The first time, Avon decided to be amused.  Blake had chosen his moment discreetly.  But his stealth was unlike his usual solid tread, so expert it hinted all too clearly at training for more dangerous uses.  And he did not leave it at once.  Soon  the mere sound of the familiar step made heat flush eagerly through Avon, and he went fully erect.  He knew Blake's strategy for what it was, a form of blackmail.  If it went on like this, sooner or later he would be caught in this embarrassing state.  He could not allow that indignity, as Blake also well knew.  That should have cooled his fever, but instead it aggravated it.  To deliver himself from this obsession he must plumb its depths.  The next time the whisper grazed his ear, he whirled on Blake.  "So do it!" he snarled.

That evening he walked the corridors of the city dome, telling himself it was madness, that he would not go to Blake.  He went late to Blake's flat, but he went. 

This time, Blake took charge with bearish gruffness, within minutes stripping away the close-fitting leather Avon had worn for the occasion and pulling him down on the living room rug.  Avon lay with every nerve ending responsive, but he was wary.  Being mastered in any way by this man was intolerable.  Blake and his hope were too irresistible.  If he deluded himself to believe in Blake in any way at all, it would never end until they were both dead.

When the rebel straddled him, he tensed.  Yet the other man was still fully clothed, and the hands that gripped his shoulders only kneaded, massaging out the tightness.  That innocent, luxurious pleasure was so unexpected that Avon could not help an appeased sigh.  He stretched like a cat under the deep, firm probings, letting his tension decrease, but trying to keep the honed edge on his wariness.  Diligently the strong fingers worked at each muscle until the searing protest of each habitual knot was eased, and Avon felt his body flowing beyond the bounds of its tensions and constraints like warm water.  He sighed his contentment as Blake rose from him.  Too relaxed to open his eyes, he listened to the soft friction of cloth as the other man shed his clothes.  Knees and calves settled warm on either side of him.  Massive thighs straddled him, and the soft, heavy heat of Blake's balls rested in the small of his back.  With desire, tension reawoke, but Blake stroked him with knowledgeable, calm hands.  Avon smiled, and gave himself again into those soothing hands.  Their touch was gentle now, not delicate yet oddly comforting, as if this man, his opponent who still would use him if he could, valued him regardless of their opposition.  Avon was familiar with the touch of passion that could worship one day and betray the next, but with a stab of reluctant wonder, he found himself thinking Blake's touch was not that sort of praise.  It was a rarer, indefinable cherishing, an even more seductive and terrifying offer to care, if Avon would permit caring.  Yet it insisted on nothing.

At least, Avon reminded himself, nothing yet.

Because the other man left him free to choose, Avon offered what he could.  As the kneading evolved into slow, luxurious caresses, he responded with banked arousal, smoothly turning over to meet Blake's kiss.  Languidly he twined his tongue with his seducer's, and willingly raised himself to the cool moisture of the lubricant.  Already excited to full hardness, he parted himself to Blake's cock.

It was not a slender, elegant cock, any more than anything about Blake was elegant, but tonight, its thickness pleased him.  Usually, he was painfully sensitive, and endured another's presence in him for the sake of reciprocation, if at all.  Now he thrust himself languorously to meet each thrust Blake made, watching from under nearly closed eyelids how Blake's arousal transformed his face, turning its again to fire, flaring his nostrils, sparking his eyes, and Avon's favorite feature, those strong brows raising slightly as Blake realized he was watching.  Avon felt the powerful body gather in desire.  Blake plunged faster, holding him close, gripping Avon's erection against the smooth, firm heat of his belly, until at last, trembling, he gave way to a shivering climax Avon could feel clearly within himself.  For a moment they hung as if suspended, then Blake shuddered and sank with a deep breath, the smooth chest coming to rest upon the dampened hair of his own, Blake's shoulder moistening his lips with a tang of salt.

Avon let his fingers stray in his partner's curls, enjoying their coarse, springy texture, yet feeling an odd suspense, as if something portentous were on the verge of happening.  Sensing his renewed tension, Blake looked at him and smiled.  "Oh no," he agreed, "it's not over."

Avon watched him warily, suspecting him of more than one meaning.

"Stand up."  Blake caressed his thigh up to his testicles, and rubbed.  The rush of sensation made Avon hiss.  "I want to do every one of the things I told you."

Avon stood, angling his hips to thrust out his erection in invitation.  And challenge.

Blake knelt, closing his hand around the shaft, evoking another onslaught of sweet, lustful throbbing, and chills up the back of his neck.  "Especially," Blake whispered, "I want to do this."

Avon gasped as the wet heat of Blake's mouth enclosed the head of his cock, and continued to enfold him.  As much as the sensation, the eagerness in Blake's face, and the thirsty lapping of his tongue drove him beyond reason or caution into a realm of light where there was no darkness, no refuge, only the brightness in Blake's face, as impassioned as during his speech about freedom.  A brightness unaccountably, unbearably beautiful and intimate, yet faraway and unattainable.  Pierced by the pain of that distance, Avon guided Blake's hand to the opening Blake had just possessed, still moist with his come.  Sucking more avidly, Blake entered deep with two fingers, trapping Avon between one unendurable vulnerability and the other, so that all he could do was writhe away from Blake's mouth enclosing him, away from Blake's touch in him, turning this way and that against Blake, his heart pounding, his surrender unwilling and fervid, his orgasm so intense that he sank to his knees, allowing Blake to hold him, since he could no longer support the burden of himself.

"You see," Blake murmured in his ear, "it's all a pretense, Avon.  You don't really want to fight what you know is true.  Not just the team we make, but the freedom to choose this.  To care for each other.  You know it's worth the struggle."

Cursing his stupidity, Avon hastily closed his barriers, but they fell awry.  "I don't notice anyone trying to stop us."

"Not _us_ ," Blake replied.  " _We_ are permitted to think and feel without suppressants controlling our minds."

"I knew you weren't to be trusted," Avon snapped.

If Blake heard, he pretended not to.  " _We_ are allowed some control over our lives.  _We_ are the privileged.  But what about the Delta labor grades, and the Gammas conditioned from childhood to be anonymous, unquestioning cogs in the military?"

Avon glared down at him.  "They're nothing to do with me."

"Nothing?  Can you share so much with me, yet feel none of the common bond that connects us all?"

With pure, delicious malice, Avon answered, "You look ridiculous orating stark naked on your knees."

Blake glanced down at himself, looked surprised, then a bit embarrassed.  But as he rose, he was no less determined.  "All the same, Avon, if there's a chance you'll share everything with me, I'm willing to wait for it."

Avon faced him, needing the truth.  "And if I never agree?"

Blake came so close that for a moment Avon feared he intended to lie with a kiss, but the rebel did not touch him.  "After tonight, I can't promise to stop wanting you by my side, in every sense."  The larger man ran his hand over Avon's chest, and came to rest over his heart.  "Ah, Avon."  He shook his head sadly.  "Probably the truth will drive you away, but I won't lie to you now.  I did want you from the first, but you were right, I hoped to draw you in.  I can't promise to stop hoping.  But I'm afraid you mean so much to me that I'll accept whatever you want."

To his utter amazement, Avon found he believed him.  He knew Blake would continue to pester him with false hopes, with the lure of impossible dreams, not least the vision of the two of them using their wits together, joined not only by sex, but the even deeper ties of a shared purpose, and shared danger.  Yet if he continued to refuse that ultimate commitment, Blake would not turn away.  Whatever Blake's obsession, his caring had no conditions.  It was not to be bought, and not to be denied.  With Blake, freedom was no lie.  Afraid to let Blake see his face, terrified of what might show there, Avon turned aside, leading the way to the bedroom.  There, in the sheltering dark, he tongued the salt dampness from Blake's body.  Starting with the tender skin behind his knee, he licked every suppleness and hardness, every plane and angle, every scent of flesh and sex, nipping where it pleased him, and soothing the hurts he made with the softness of his lips.  Blake chuckled at their lighthearted play, as if he sensed how rare this mood was for Avon.  Gathering him into the curve of his body, Blake sank at last into the trusting oblivion of sleep, and even Avon slept easily that night.

He awoke with his decision made.  Gently he eased from the bed, and stood looking down at Blake.  In sleep, the blunt, masculine features looked innocent beneath the tousled curls.  Whatever the risk, Avon craved more than an incomplete fraction of what Blake offered him.  Whatever commitment to this man meant, he wanted it.  "Blake," he began.

The corner of Blake's mouth curved in a hint of smile, but he did not wake.  It was still very early, and Avon had work to do.  Yesterday the physicists had demanded extensive modifications, and the next set of experiments were only a week away.  He left Blake sleeping undisturbed.  Time enough to tell him, when he saw him next.

He had scarcely arrived at work when the physicists asked him to accommodate yet another theory, a harebrained one, in Avon's opinion.  Since next week's experiments involved human subjects, it was their death sentences Avon was certain he was being told to program in.  Before, they had at least stood a chance.  He supposed the news of the physicists' latest brainstorm had reached Engineering, and wondered if Blake guessed what a blunder it was.  And if he told him, whether Blake would expect him to circumvent it.  That would be risky.  He could hide the traces from his co-workers, but if another expert of his caliber reviewed the work he would be caught.  Imagining Blake's horror at the pointless waste of life, Avon was amazed to find himself angry, not on Blake's behalf, but with a long-suppressed rage of his own, welling up from some darkness where he had tried to shut it away forever.  He had been part of other experiments that had sent people to their deaths.  Like these, they were convicted criminals, sentenced to serve as laboratory animals until some experiment killed them.  Now, Avon found himself thinking of CYCLOPS, and ways to infiltrate the system's security.  He resumed work with a new, silent fury, not emerging to the awareness of time until the small hours of the next day.

Returning after a few hours' sleep, he went straight to Engineering.  His excuse to confer with Blake met with uneasy looks.  One of Blake's colleagues took him aside and explained that Blake had not shown up at work for two time units, and a rumor was spreading that he was in political trouble.

In vain Avon told himself that if they had taken Blake there was nothing he could do.  Against his better judgement, he risked checking the neighborhood of Blake's flat.  The building opened off a wide pedestrians-only thoroughfare, and like most in the city dome, had no windows.  At a distance, Avon took stock of the entrance.  No uniformed guards were in evidence, but of course they wouldn't be.  When he spotted the scattered loiterers within sight of the door, his worst fears were confirmed.  No doubt, they hoped to discover who was involved enough with Blake to care that he was missing.  Avon passed by without another glance.  They were not holding Blake here.  Two days ago they would have hustled him secretly to some prison stronghold.

Avon wrote the aquitar programs to the physicists' specifications, and when the experiments killed the subjects, willed himself not to think about it.  He only wished he could as successfully shut out the thought of Blake undergoing interrogation, tortured, dying.  Against those ceaseless nightmare permutations, he ranged one stark fact:  If the Federation had waited even a few days longer to arrest Blake, they'd have got him, too.

It was all insanity.  All the hope Blake had offered, all the dreams that had tantalized and seduced.  The Federation controlled half the known galaxy; on Earth, it controlled utterly.  What lunacy had he nearly succumbed to, imagining a meagre utopian rabble had a chance against such overwhelming power?  Claiming to care, Blake would have killed him, and for nothing.  Though he could not stop his nightmares, he set his waking mind to rejecting Blake, and the whole mad, suicidal notion of resistance.  As he had always known, survival lay only in playing the game, and advantage only in prudent, calculated cheating.

Nevertheless, he watched every viscast with unbearable expectation.

After several endless weeks, a leading story announced that a rebel leader had turned himself in.  So, they had spared Blake's life.  Avon knew enough to realize that was not good news.  Every muscle tensed with dread when he saw Blake on the screen.  Not in obvious custody, the familiar figure was robbed of its robust energy, its placid stance seeming a stranger's.  In the close-ups his face did not seemed drugged, but its slackness was unbearable to watch.  Grimly, Avon forced himself to study it closely.  _That,_ he told himself, _could have been me._   He forced himself to listen as in a contrite, sincere voice Blake explained the error of his ways, and appealed to all Federation citizens to support the administration.  His urging even grew rather persuasive, the decayed remains of his former passion.  Teeth clenched against billowing swells of vertigo, Avon fought everything down, the rage, the terror, the grief that racked him as if tearing sinew from bone.

To his vast relief, Blake did not return to the Aquitar Project.  The staff was told the strain of his soul-searching had made him ill, but when he recovered, the administration, in its benevolence, would return him to work at another facility.  For which, Avon translated, Blake had been permanently broken, his personality revised so completely there was no need to execute or deport him.  No doubt, he had far more propaganda value this way.  Trying to bury his rage, Avon flung himself into a frenzy of work by day, and hard, uncaring promiscuity by night, a fury that did not abate until he met Anna.  He stayed with the Aquitar Project for another year.  Its associations tormented him, and its eventual failure was becoming all too obvious, but he did not dare rouse suspicion by leaving too soon after Blake's departure.  Doubtless, Security had watched Blake's flat before the arrest, and must know he had spent the night there.  Since they had not questioned him, he hoped they thought it only a one-night stand.  That was close enough to the truth.  If he played his hand wisely, perhaps his security rating would remain undamaged and he could work in the banking system.  With his skills, that meant nothing less than a blank check on every bank in the Federated worlds.

It was nearly a year later when, arriving early for an appointment in a part of the city he rarely frequented, he spotted a quiet bar.  The interior was comfortable, with replicas of antique electrical lamps casting a muted glow on a clientele obviously Alpha and the better paid sort of Beta.  They chatted quietly in small groups, a gregarious collection with nothing better to do; quiet laughter rose above the music.  The place was too blandly sociable for Avon's taste, but he found a dim corner and ordered a drink.

A chattering party dispersed, opening a view of the table beyond, and the back of a curly brown head above broad shoulders.  Avon tensed.  Even as he told himself he was wrong, the man raised his finger and gnawed thoughtfully on it.  The emotions that flooded him at that familiar gesture were too ecstatic and alarming to call by any one name.  In a desperate knot of anger, fear and longing, he watched this unwelcome ghost, this symbol of love that had almost been, and the destruction it would have brought.  Blake's companions, a man and woman dressed in moderately well-cut tunics, as if for office work, argued amiably.  Avon could not hear what about, but they were certainly making no secret of it.  They only seemed three colleagues having a beer after work.  The woman said something that made Blake's head go back, and the rich rolling of his laughter, carrying under the other voices, caressed Avon's ears.

_Go_ , every impulse for self-preservation protested, but the desperation that had seized him would not let him leave.  Though for all he knew, Blake was still under surveillance, he had to know how far they had succeeded in breaking him.

He did not keep his appointment.  The scam he and Keeler were planning could wait.  He sipped slowly, waiting until his shock had lessened and he was once again in total, rational control.  After Blake's release he had steeled himself against the time when Blake would contact him.  Out of custody Blake might be, but not free.  Every move would be watched, and everyone who associated with him would come under scrutiny.  Avon could afford only to rebuff him, pretending, for the benefit of any surveillance, that their liaison had been casual and meaningless.  When the months passed with no word, Avon's assessment changed.  Perhaps Blake had not been so broken as he had feared.  Perhaps enough strength remained to him to keep his promise, and let Avon choose.

For that, if nothing else, Avon owed him one brief acknowledgement, and silent thanks.  Indeed, if the former rebel was being watched now, it would look suspicious if Avon did not acknowledge the chance meeting.

He crossed the room to Blake's table.  All three looked up politely.  "Hello," he said, giving Blake a detached glance despite his pounding heart. "It's been quite a while."

Blake frowned slightly, his polite inquiry unchanged.  "Sorry, have we met?"

Avon searched for a signal, any secret sign of gladness, warning, even rejection.  There was none.  The realization struck like a plasma bolt, a searing blast that left only numb devastation.  This was no pretense.  Blake had no memory of him at all.

"My mistake," Avon murmured.  "From across the room, you resembled an acquaintance."

He had known they had conditioned Blake.  No torture or fear could make him betray his cause and his comrades.  He would know the demoralizing effect of that betrayal, and Avon was certain he would have died first.  Once they had forced him to reveal all he knew about the resistance, they would twist and feed it back to him, induce aversion, revise memories to arouse self-loathing. Avon's discreet research had determined all too certainly that they were capable of altering even a mind as strong as Blake's.  Yet, in none of his imaginings had it occurred to him that Blake would not remember him.

Grotesque irony, only CYCLOPS was sophisticated enough to make such complex changes.  The system Avon had refused to sabotage had destroyed him.  At least, his best self.  Because that image, what he could have become, had existed only in Blake's mind.

Annoyed at his lapse into sentimentality, Avon deliberately reached down in the dark, encircling the base of his cock with his fist.  For more than a year now, he had possessed the secret advantage of a memory that belonged to him alone:  Blake surrendering to him in ecstasy, mouth open in small cries at each thrust; Blake swallowing his come and drawing him down into his arms; Blake, whom he had possessed intimately but who, for all purposes that counted, had never possessed him.  In his times of rage at the spell the man still cast over him, he hoarded his secret with malicious gloating, recounting to himself intimate details that would appall Blake if he knew.  That was enough to make them enjoyable in the darkness, and amusing as he worked with Blake, as they argued, as he followed Blake not freely now, but unwillingly.  If his use of his knowledge was a sort of rape, Avon felt no remorse.  In every way but sexually, Blake thought nothing of doing the same to him, binding him with every power he knew so well how to command, consciously, and unconsciously.  Because remember or not, it was all there, buried in the depths of Blake's mind.  Rationally or intuitively, Blake used it all against him.

Besides, all too often the poisonous, desperate longing that overcame him in the darkness robbed him of his triumph over Blake even at the moment of orgasm.  In the tenderness that assailed him lay the unbearable knowledge that Blake held no power over him but love.

That was the one truth he swore to himself Blake would never know.

When after his own arrest and deportation, Blake had returned to haunt him yet again, his bitter amusement at the irony of fate was the first thing to break into the hollow numbness left by Anna's death.

As Blake had guessed, he already had a plan of escape, but the rebel little suspected its ruthlessness.  Blake was wrong about his plan to fake the ship's running log.  The crew would not kill Avon to keep him quiet.  A simple code would solve that problem.  The program would not activate until he transmitted it from a safe distance.  But the London's crew would never accept a deal that included two dozen witnesses on the loose.  They would kill every prisoner but Avon.

His plan might have worked.  If not with the captain, with Raiker.

Yet, he abandoned it.  Why?

Though he had suspected Blake's sanity after what had been done to him, he was surprised at how much was left intact.  Some memories, like his political activities, the man was obviously groping to reassemble, but whole areas seemed untouched.  It confirmed what Avon had suspected once he got over the shock of Blake not remembering him:  The Federation had not questioned him during Blake's first arrest because they had known he was not involved in the resistance, but they feared a future alliance between Blake and himself enough to erase not only Blake's memory of their short affair, but to plant in him a sexual aversion to men.  On the London, he treated Jenna and the male prisoners with telling differences that signalled his monosexuality, differences he had never shown before.

That suited Avon.  He wanted Blake to keep his distance.  But much as he told himself he did not care, other, subtler changes in Blake surfaced to dismay him.  In place of the open warmth that had drawn him like a moth to the flame, there was a driven will in its own way as cold as his own.  He too was more armored, less capable of feeling than before Anna's death and his own weeks of interrogation.  Yet with Blake it was more than that.  Watching him with Jenna, Vila and the other prisoners, Avon noted his acute ability to gather and hold them to his cause, but his lack of interest in anything merely personal.  Not that Avon would have faulted him for putting his own advantage first.  But Blake did not do that.  He was still dedicated to his beliefs, but at the cost of all that had once nearly convinced Avon to believe in him.  This Blake would never love without subjugating both love and lover to his cause.  In fact, for all his bleeding heart principles, perhaps he was no longer capable of loving an individual at all.  Despite Avon's own wish not to love, he knew himself all too capable.

In a near-fatal moment of weakness, he threw away his chance to fake the running log, and landed himself where he least wanted to be, in circumstances where his best hope of survival was with Blake.  When Blake startled him by remembering the Aquitar Project, he found himself hoping for a moment.  But his guardedly hopeful "Small world," was quashed by Blake's flat "Large project."  And when Blake answered his probing into the reliability of his memories of Travis with a passionate, "Oh, I'll remember _him_ ," Avon was gripped with sudden fury at Blake, at the enemy who meant more to Blake than he did, at the entire universe.  During the year on the Liberator, watching the small signs Blake was wresting other pieces of his past from oblivion, Avon had waited with dread and anticipation for the inevitable time when the memory of him would reassert itself.  Yet it did not come.

Instead, once they acquired Orac, Blake began researching another former lover.

Blake's secret queries did not long remain hidden from Avon's determination.   He learned they centered around two subjects, Control Central, and a woman named Lindra.  In growing disillusionment Avon learned that even as Blake had pursued him and given what Avon had believed was his whole-hearted passion, this Lindra was his real love. For days he had not trusted himself to face Blake.  He took the watch while the others slept, brooding on this discovery.  It changed things so drastically that no future on the Liberator seemed possible.  Lindra, too, had refused to join Blake's cause.  No doubt, Blake had found it easy to convince Avon.  He had only to pretend what was true with Lindra.  By a magnificently bitter irony, the very night Blake lured Avon into the folly of believing, Lindra had died in a space accident.  He wondered how Blake had seen that irony -- though by the time Blake learned of Lindra's death, he had problems of his own.  Surveillance, keeping constant watch for weeks before the arrest, reported Blake had spent his last night with Lindra, and seen her off --

Listening to Orac, Avon had leaned forward, gripping the computer's casing.  According to Federation records, the date of Blake's last night with Lindra was the night Avon remembered as his first with Blake.

It was possible either his memory or Blake's file were inaccurate.  But in a state of numb expectancy, Avon gripped Orac's casing harder as he attacked the computer with a deluge of questions.  He had falsified enough computer records in his time to search out the signs of tampering.  Whoever had altered Blake's records had left only a few small seams, but they were unmistakable.  No such person as Lindra Sunders had ever existed.

Or rather, Lindra was himself.  A disguise the psycho-manipulators had constructed to explain any stray memories that might surface.  He had spent sleepless nights seething with jealousy -- of himself.

There was only one explanation.  Blake's real records existed somewhere, undiscovered by either Blake or himself.  This file, heavily screened by all sorts of impressive security, was meant for Blake to break into.  Some psycho-strategist, armed with all sorts of information about both of them, had made a correct guess that Avon would keep their past to himself, and that the longer he did, the more anger and betrayal Blake would feel when he did realize.  Even from this distance, the Federation were doing their best to keep him and Blake apart.

But not as much as Blake did.  Despite shattering most of his conditioning, after a year working together, relying on each other, locked in intimate enmity, Blake still did not remember him.

Perhaps that was because he did not want to.

Avon turned over in the dark, still far from sleep.  He had stood this torment of waiting, doubting, loving and hating Blake for too long.  Despite the implanted aversion to men, he could make some buried part of Blake respond to him; he had proven that much.  Whatever Blake's wrath, it was preferable to this doubt and isolation.  He wanted to feast on Blake, the earthy musk of his arousal, the sweet, solid heat of his flesh and willful energy of his passion.  If there was the slightest chance that with the return of memory the other damage could be restored, and Blake could be all he once was --

Avon stopped those thoughts cold.  To give in to that false hope would be gullible indeed.  Blake had taken up with Jenna, and what was left of him was clearly not enough to content her.  If it had been so difficult for him to resist subjugating personal caring to his cause even when he was whole, how could it be possible now?  Was he to abjectly bare his arse to a man who might service him, but only to keep him on the Liberator?  The very notion made him seethe with humiliation and loathing.  He hated Blake all the more for the desire that flared in it, swift and hot as a solar flare.

_No_ , Avon vowed to the darkness.  _Not like that.  I will not be forgotten.  I **will** make you remember me._

 Blake was reading a communication from the Earth resistance leader Kasabi when Avon came in.  His glance scourged the lounge chairs, Cally and Vila's abandoned game pieces, then found Blake.  Without an acknowledgement he claimed an upright chair across the room, and reached for the book screen.  Though he sat with his usual self-contained grace, Blake noticed his tension.

As if he had drawn up his forces and waited, poised behind his battle lines.

Blake went back to his reading, ignoring the feeling that Avon covertly scrutinized him.  If there was any reason for Avon's increased moodiness, it was not their lack of success with the Terra Nostra.  Though Avon had not liked the plan, had taken pleasure in delivering his cryptic "perhaps we already know," and, no doubt, greater pleasure when events proved him right, his capitulation had not been especially difficult.  No, whatever was eating him now, it was not that.

During the past weeks, Avon's silence had grown all but unbearable, and more irritating yet because he refused to let himself be caught at his cat-and-mouse game.  What was the man waiting for?

Though Blake had not sorted out his own feelings, he was back in control of them.  Once he discovered whatever link his subconscious drew between Avon and Lindra, his fascination became comprehensible.  Yet, if it was a remnant of the past, it refused to stay there.  In dreams he saw his old flat more clearly than in waking memory, but in recent dreams it was not Lindra's slender body arching in feverish ecstasy, not her tongue that wantonly caressed his entire body.  It was Avon's.

When he uncovered why his mind had chosen Avon as a symbol for the lost mystery of Lindra, surely these alarming, perilous images would dispel, and with them, the doubt that haunted him whenever he tried to recall her.  The unease that something was . . . wrong.

He teetered on the brink of the void again.  Until he remembered everything, how could he be sure his most deeply hoarded convictions, the very reasons he fought the Federation, were not _his_ but _theirs_?  Only in his struggle against them did he feel he was his own man, yet even here he feared they would find some way to destroy him, not with plasma bolts, but by using the holes they had blasted in his mind to rob him of all he had desperately salvaged.  If only there were someone he could trust with his fears, it might be his salvation.

If only he could trust Avon.

Hearing the silence, feeling again Avon's intent regard, Blake could not resist trying yet again to catch him at it.  Glancing up abruptly, he found himself staring directly into Avon's obsidian gaze.  Arrogantly, Avon lifted his brows.  "You've been watching me for weeks.  Why?"

The accusation so ridiculously unjust that for a moment there seemed no possible answer.  The last thing he wanted now was to deal with this deliberate provocation.

That was it.

Deliberate provocation.

This fascination with Avon, this seeing him in the place of a lover was not _his_ unaccountable quirk?   The shock made Blake recoil.  Yet, the more he considered, the more sense it made that for weeks his subconscious had recognized what he had resisted noticing consciously.  That Avon had launched a deliberate campaign to seduce him.

Seeing his comprehension, Avon's eyes glittered in anger.  But as Blake saw his chest rise and fall with his quick breathing, he realized it wasn't anger, or not only that.  All along, it had been easier to see the avidness of Avon's fury as no more than anger, or at least, no more than an eager taste for aggression and opposition.  How long had he been blind to what else smoldered there?

And how to save the situation?  Now that Avon had seen his recoil, there would be hell to pay.

Avon pressed his lips together.  The enigmatic eyes went darker than the void.  The balance had always been so tenuous between this man's friendship and enmity, between his staying and going.  Now, Blake feared it was shattered.  Now Avon would leave him.

_No_ , everything in him cried out. _You must keep him.  Avon and the Liberator.   Those two resources you must have, or fall into the abyss.  Take any chance, just don't lose him._

He saw only one chance.  It was desperate, but if he could turn this revelation from disaster to long-awaited triumph, if by giving Avon what he wanted he might at last win his commitment, that was worth whatever it took.  "What's the matter, Avon?" he answered quietly.  "Afraid I'll do more than look?"

Avon's intaken breath was quick and sharp.  His eyes narrowed, fury surging like a dark wave over his desire.  Blake knew his own bravado had come too late.  Avon realized what he was doing, and why.  Now for the wrath that would destroy them both.

Miraculously, it did not come.  Instead, Avon smiled.  That one curve of his lips spoke volumes of cold contempt for every motive Blake had, and everything that made this worthwhile.  The pain beneath the fury utterly destroyed the nobility of the self-sacrifice Blake had imagined, showing it up for selfishness, the cheapest of bargains.  Avon's anguish seared through him, intolerable.

On impulse, Blake rose.  Ignoring Avon's tensing and the fist that closed to strike, he advanced.

"Don't come near me, Blake," Avon hissed.

"I will," Blake told him, closing in so near those dark eyes seemed to fill the universe.  "I will, because you want me to."

Avon's lips opened to deny, but darkness devoured the brown rims of his irises, his expanding pupils turning his eyes utterly black, the terrible night of the void, but also of uncreated possibilities, of limitlessness.  Prickles ran up Blake's back as he took the beautiful, baleful face in his hands, giving Avon no choice but to look into his eyes.  No choice but to burn with that dark light, that sudden conflagration of acknowledgement.  The sculpted lips that had tormented him with scathing words, with disdainful little smiles, slowly parted.  Blake met them with his own, and felt the incredible reality of Avon's arms closing about him, Avon's mouth sucking his lower lip, the tip of his tongue drawing delicate traceries across it.  Despite Avon's smaller body, nausea arose at its solid, tightly muscled maleness.

But if he pulled away now, it would all be over.

It was Avon who stepped back, his moist lips remaining slightly parted, his eyes wide with his unspoken question.

Blake answered it.  "Shouldn't we take ourselves off someplace more private?"

Avon's lips shut.  For a fleeting moment, Blake was sure he saw disappointment, but then Avon answered in the lowest of purrs, "Should we?"  Beneath the seductiveness of his voice, the hoarse crackle of a dangerous voltage.

Groping for sanity in the midst of this maelstrom, Blake admitted, "It _is_ a risk.  We may end up tearing out each other's throats."

Avon showed his teeth in a taunting smile.  "If you like."  His eyes travelled down Blake as if he considered where to bite first, but then the smile disappeared.  "However, that isn't quite what I have in mind."  The eyes flicked up.

Waiting.

Why was it so easy to take him by the back of the neck, to draw him close and enter his mouth deeper than before?  Feeling Avon's tongue slide along his, and the wet heat of his sucking,  Blake burrowed further, tasting the textures of satiny flesh, sinuous tongue, hard teeth.  Despite the revulsion that threatened just beneath the surface, he also wanted this because the man he held was Avon.

The heat of Avon's mouth withdrew, and again the questioning eyes searched his.  Abruptly, Avon turned his back, leading the way up the steps and along the corridor.

Rubbing his lips with the back of his hand, Blake followed, considering what he had gotten himself into.  Avon might try to even the score between them by dominating in bed.  While the point of all this was to give Avon what he wanted, Blake had glimpsed a taste for violence in the man that made him uneasy.  Not only would his own inexperience make his body hyper-sensitive, there was the danger he might not be capable of arousal with a man.  If so, he knew Avon's pride too well to expect mercy.

At the branching of the corridor, Avon took the way leading not to his cabin but Blake's, even now insisting on remaining unknown and unknowable, his own private space inviolate.

Reaching Blake's door, Avon paused, waiting for Blake to open it.  For that symbolic assent that Blake wanted this.  _We're in it together,_ Blake thought, looking at the exquisite curves of Avon's lips, the guarded stillness of his face.  _There are no assurances for either of us._ He opened the door.

Avon followed him in, and pressed the lock control behind them.  Knowing Avon's unpredictability, his incomprehensible moods, Blake could not let this go on without opening an escape route.  "This needn't change anything, if you don't want it to.  Don't think I believe -- "

"Just now," Avon's voice was a peculiar mixture of surrender and predatory exultation, "you would be surprised how little I care what you believe."  His erection bulged against the soft leather, its outline clear.  Blake braced himself for the nausea, but it did not come.  A shiver vibrated up from the base of his spine, but it was not fear.  It was curiosity and anticipation.  Blake stood his ground as Avon ran one broad, smooth hand down the front of Blake's shirt, his touch almost too delicate to feel.  He loosened the buttons one by one, then as the shirt fell apart his fingers touched Blake's skin.  The touch was tentative, an asking Blake knew he could not put into words.  An asking Blake would have answered, had he known what answer Avon wanted.

Placing his hand over Avon's, Blake kissed him again, but Avon's tongue pushed his aside.  The point of it swept across the roof of his mouth, its touch shockingly thorough, astoundingly intimate.  From Avon he would have expected expertise perhaps, ironic detachment certainly, but never this relentless intimacy.  As if Avon were claiming what was his.  Could it be exactly that?  Was he saying he was at last ready to give his loyalty?  This was the testing ground for the commitment Blake had been awaiting so long?  At this possibility, something broke loose in Blake, some obstruction he had not realized was there.  His heart beat in mounting jubilation against Avon's hand, and he sought Avon's tongue as hungrily as Avon sucked his.  Blake closed his arms, feeling the strength beneath the smooth leather of the tunic.  Avon pressed closer, one hand travelling up to Blake's curls, the other pushing off his shirt.  Blake shrugged out of it, letting it drop on the floor.

Avon drew off his own tunic and draped it over a chair.  Beneath, he wore a shirt of soft black silk.  In a curiosity as avid as desire, Blake fumbled with the buttons until he had them undone, and the silk flowed under his hands, sliding open to reveal a surprisingly solid chest, shaded with fine, dark hair, just as in his dreams.  There was an unaccountable sense of rightness in the body Avon revealed to him, the compact strength of the chest, the flushed rose of the nipples, the grace Blake found infinitely pleasing even if it was entirely masculine.  This was the way Avon would look.  The only way he could look.

It was not like stepping outside the boundaries of experience, but returning home.

Home.  Avon.  Two antithetical ideas, yet oddly synonymous. 

"You may touch me, if you like."  Finally, the mockery Blake had expected, but it was only a trace, oddly gentle.  Realizing he had been standing there gawking, Blake smiled, and passed his palm over the planes of Avon's chest.  The hair was so soft Blake couldn't help a surge of tenderness.  If the slicing edge of Avon's cynicism was undeniably real, so was this mist-fine softness, and this naked skin was not impervious stone, only human flesh.  Blake followed the even finer darkness down to where it gathered in a rivulet, running to his navel.  He stroked around the rim, and dipped into it.  Avon shivered, but accepted the intimacy without a flinch.  This new Avon, as permissive as if Blake had earned the unquestioned rights of a lover, intrigued Blake.  Could Avon really be granting him these rights?  Or was the man so arrogant in his sexual prowess that he could be this relaxed even with one he regarded as nearly an enemy?

Below his navel, the shadowy softness of the hair spread out, but the leather hid its further course, too snug to allow further exploration.  Blake drew down the zipper, revealing the taut firmness of Avon's belly, and further down, where the fine hair became a springy tangle, a dark flame as avid as the fire in Avon's eyes.  Yet when he touched, it was Avon who shuddered as if burnt.

The beauty of the man astounded Blake.  He had never imagined a man's body could move him so deeply.  If he still felt queasy at what was about to happen, he also felt a dim, but pleasurable pressure at the base of his cock.

His pulse pounding in his ears, he pulled the leather down further.  Avon's cock sprang free, jutting insistently above the fullness of his balls.  Blake pushed the leather down to his boots and Avon stepped out of it with a motion neat as a water bird's.  Naked he stood before Blake, his arrogance too defiant not to be a disguise.  Blake found this proof of his vulnerability oddly touching.

It made the next thing he must do a little easier, but not much.  He had been on guard against Avon too often to want to strip in front of him.  Too many times Avon had waited in ambush, and too many times, attacked.  Now they were entirely on Avon's ground, this desire Avon's, not his.  The man might have made himself susceptible as never before, but meant to push that engorged cock into him.  It wasn't the pain he dreaded, it was Avon fucking him.

But it was necessary.  Blake pulled off his boots, unbuckled his trousers, and pushed them off, underwear along with them.  Defiantly he faced Avon.

And surprised in him a determination as dogged as his own.  At once Avon covered it with a rather supercilious appreciation, but not soon enough.  Blake tensed.  Just when he had thought Avon had finally showed his whole hand.  He should have known better, with Avon.  Always, there would be a yet deeper layer of hidden purpose.  What was it this time?  Blake feared he had been right, that Avon intended to humiliate him.  Maybe that would be enough to satisfy him, and they could get on with their business.  Even if he emerged from this experience hating Avon, he needed him against Control Central.  In deliberate invitation, he moved to Avon, and knelt.

With a soft intake of breath, Avon gripped his shoulders.  As Blake placed his hand on the angular-muscled thigh, its masculine hardness and hair appalled him, and the nausea that had lurked in the background of his consciousness seized him.  Surely it was no mere symptom of reluctance, or even fear.  This purely physical revulsion was so incongruous with his appreciation of Avon's beauty that he felt driven back against his will by some sudden, inimical storm.  He had experienced something like it, fighting to recover shreds of himself from the void, but it had not haunted his memories of Lindra, or his nights with Jenna.  If it was some form of conditioning, its purpose was inexplicable.  The Federation's interests would lie in promoting the elitist alpha trait of bisexuality in him, not erasing it.  Whatever this reluctance was, it stood between him and what he wanted.  Swallowing against it, Blake moved his hand up Avon's thigh to the fine, smooth flesh of his groin.  Avon closed his eyes, his breathing quick and shallow.

At least, his touch had its desire effect upon Avon.  Blake slid his open palm over the depression between thigh and hip, inward to the thicket of dark hair.  It was softer to the touch than he expected, springy but silken.  Blake smiled.  Nothing in the texture to inspire anything but pleasure, and Avon's breath fluttered beneath his hand as if it were Avon, not he, who had everything to fear.

Blake made himself close his hand over the shaft of the cock.  Bracing against the sick dizziness that came over him, he squeezed as he slowly travelled along the rigid column to the head.  With held breath, Avon submitted to every ministration as Blake used the touches that worked best on himself.

Avon's cock was like his hands, strong rather than slender, its grace in its upcurving angle.  The head was flared, and on the underside, its ridge ended in two indentations converging toward the tip.  The humorous thought struck Blake that the tip of Avon's cock rather resembled the end of his nose.  No wonder it seemed so familiar.  Blake smiled, any anxieties about the its threat banished for now.  As cocks went, he supposed this one was even prepossessing, with its dashing upcurve and prominent veins.  Moistening his fingers, he circled the rim of the head, making of them a rhythmically contracting ring.  Though this was not a technique he had ever used on himself and he had no idea why it had occurred to him.  Avon seized him by the shoulders with a gasp, thrusting in a shameless abandon Blake would not have imagined of him.  As Avon's body arched hot and intimate against his own, with wonder Blake felt a throbbing pressure rise in his own sex.  Though he could not bring himself to put his mouth on Avon, he pumped, excited by the tightening of Avon's hands on him, and the tautness of Avon's naked body against him, poised on an edge of urgency and expectation so acute Blake expected its release any moment.  Avon threw back his head, but just as Blake prepared for his final onslaught, Avon gripped his wrists, stepping back.  "Not that way," he hissed.

Blake felt the full weight of reluctance return.

"What are you thinking, Blake?" Avon watched him intently, but his voice was curious, almost gentle.  Both question and tone were so different from his usual pretended lack of involvement that Blake wished fervently he could answer.

But the truth was the one answer he could not give.  Not with everything balanced so precariously.  He must make Avon think he wanted this.  Yet, he wanted to trust Avon with enough truth to acknowledge that uncharacteristic kindness.  "I'm hoping I'm not too clumsy at this.  I haven't much experience with men.  -- No."  He smiled, entrusting Avon with the power to use for good or ill.  "Actually, I haven't any."

Avon's brows rose a fraction.  "Is that so?" he asked coolly.

Why the man rebuked him for _that_ was beyond any understanding.  For a person who prided himself on being logical, Kerr Avon was an erratic swarm of stinging moods.

Deliberately breaking contact with that accusing gaze, Blake went to the bed and sat.  He looked his own question at Avon, who faced him unmoving for a moment longer, then capitulated.  With an ironic flick of his mouth, he approached.  His cock bobbed with each step, the jutting member mesmerizing and threatening as a cobra poised to strike.  Belying Avon's contrariness, it strained eagerly, head like a cobra's flared hood, avid to sway to Blake's tune.  Avon could do nothing to stop the consciousness of Blake's gaze from making it rear yet higher.

So from now on the skills it took to lead a revolution included cobra charming?  That amused Blake enough to help him control the sick panic.

Closing one hand on it, he used the other to pull Avon down to the bed.  Avon landed beside him with a cobra's hiss, but it was an empty threat.  He did nothing spiteful, only moved to press the heat of his body against Blake's.  "If you really are that inexperienced," his breath grazed Blake's ear, "you may take the more familiar role.  If you like."

Surprised, Blake raised to see his face.  The eyes were shadowy pools, but the lips full and relaxed.  "I would like," he answered gratefully, and lowered his head to the pillow, waiting for the panic to abate.  Yet the sick dizziness only increased.  "Why are you being so understanding?" he asked.  "What are you after, anyway?"

Avon's purr warmed his ear.  "Isn't it obvious?"

"To indulge some long-hidden, secret lust for me?  Come on, Avon.  I know you better than that.  You'd have to have a better reason."

"An ulterior motive, you mean?"  The lips grazing his ear moved in a smile.  "Of course I do.  As you say, _you know me better than that_."

"And you don't want to tell me."

"How perceptive of you."  But his voice held little sting.  Again the hope filled Blake that Avon needed him.  That though what he could not bring himself to confess was his longing to trust.  If he could prove to Avon it was safe to trust, what might they not accomplish together?  From somewhere, a phrase came to him:  _comrades in arms_.  And why not?  Whatever physical repugnance he must overcome, Avon's loyalty was worth more.

In an attempt to rekindle the faint throbbing of desire, Blake slid his hands over the smaller man's hips to his buttocks, kneading their round trimness.  Avon did not resist, but closed his eyes, his lips parting.  To have this new power over him was a heady feeling.  The demon still lurked, but for the meantime, passion haltered it.  Not sharing in this passion, he could use it the better to bind and control the demon in Avon.  -- If he could give Avon what he wanted.

Deliberately, Blake evoked the visions of Lindra that his dreams had merged with Avon, determined to use even her, if he must, to serve this necessity.  A waver of guilt at abusing her memory gave way to a rush of images, rubbing the tension out of Lindra's back and feeling the resilient warmth of her beneath him, the deep, thrilling softness of her sigh as she rested her head on his shoulder, sharing a bottle of wine by soft lights as she told him her worries for his safety.  Though she was usually tanned, he saw her in at least one of their nights together with skin as fair as Avon's, the back of her neck and her hair both fine to his touch.  She had a wicked, tickling tongue.  He passed his hand down Avon's thigh and smiled, remembering that.

As if sensing a difference, Avon turned swiftly beneath him, levelling on him the full intensity of his avid gaze.  A shock like a blow.  An unforeseen, vivid certainty.  Though Lindra's face had remained indistinct, he had thought of her eyes as blue.  He remembered now, as clearly as he remembered his name, they were not light, but as inscrutable in their darkness as these eyes gazing up at him now.  No wonder he found Avon's eyes so compelling and disturbing.

Lindra's eyes, too, had mirrored him darkly, unable to believe in him quite enough.  No longer in emptiness, but an aching sadness full of unshed tears, Blake closed his eyes, holding Avon close, mourning for missed chances, his own, Lindra's, and Avon's, whatever those had been, and encouraging the fantasy that it was his link to his lost past he held.  That Avon had some key he longed to possess.  Needed to possess.

Because somehow, it was true.  He had always known it.  With that certainty, the nausea, the last shred of panic, disappeared.  Startled, he looked down into Avon's eyes, but this time it was Avon who turned away as if afraid to hold the gaze.  As if he had never seen it before, Avon's beauty took his breath away, the silky shine of his hair in the dim light, the sweep of his back with its collected strength.  In wonder he passed his hand along the sinuous convexity of the upper curve to the tender concavity of the lower.  Coming to rest in the slight depression above the buttocks, Blake realized as never before how precious this man was to him.  With the knowledge the tightness in his balls returned, and a pulse at the base of his cock.

He returned to the swell of those firm buttocks, drawn this time to the cleft, feeling the beckoning of every mystery he yearned to discover.  The backs of those thighs looked made to straddle.  Blake settled over him, feeling his stillness, the calm before a storm that both alarmed and compelled.  Avon.  The portal to remembering, to the future, to the destruction of the Federation.  All possibilities converged and became one hope, centered here.  In Avon, and no one else.  The heat mounted, throbbing hard in his cock.

Almost imperceptibly, Avon raised himself in invitation.  Slight as it was, the gesture shattered Blake's self-control.  He parted the supple mounds, revealing the place where the skin became flushed, and the dark, soft down gave way to curled tendrils encircling the small opening.  The portal to Avon's body.  The way into a dark mystery no longer an empty abyss but full of yet-to-be created promise.  In awe Blake touched the small, puckered entrance that had taken on such importance.  It tightened involuntarily, then relaxed. 

Another memory struck him, less momentous, but this time he could share it.  "I once saw an old vistape," again he lightly grazed the puckered opening with his fingertip and saw it contract, "of a sea anemone."

"Oh?"  Avon's voice was muffled in his arm.  "You think I am carnivorous?"  But his irony was whimsical.  Sex throbbing painfully, Blake took the enticing flesh in his hands, parting Avon's buttocks still further, and nudged the inviting, carnivorous anemone, anus, portal, with the head of his cock.

But he would not abuse this gift.  If he knew little, at least he realized that without lubrication he would bring Avon pain.  Yet he could think of nothing in his cabin that would serve.

"My right tunic pocket," Avon said without raising his head.  His voice sounded as indistinct as if he were drowning.

Leaning over the edge of the bed, Blake grabbed Avon's leather tunic and found the tube.  Before, that proof of Avon's premeditation might have disturbed him, but now it seemed an admirable wisdom.  The lubricant felt already warm on his fingers, its scent like some alien forest.

Pulse hammering in his temples and cock, he eased his coated fingers into the cleft, and spread the cream on the small, hot opening.  Avon pressed his forehead into the crook of his arm, raising himself to Blake's finger.  With only the slightest pressure, Blake breached the tight entrance.  It clasped him, hotter yet, and yielded to his deeper penetration, incredibly smooth and elastic.  Unlike a woman's sex, but that thought no longer disturbed him.  It felt more like the inner tissue of a mouth than anything else.  "Carnivorous anemone," he confirmed.

Avon moaned in answer, writhing against the finger.  Raised like this, his balls hung down, their vulnerability wonderfully tempting.  Blake cupped them in his other hand and rubbed, drawing from his rational cynic an inarticulate sound of pure surrender.  It was more than he could endure.  He positioned his sex at the hungry opening.  Avon rose to meet him.  The moist, pliant flesh swallowed him past the ridge.  Yet it stopped there, contracting protectively against him, and Avon's discomfort showed in the tension that rippled through his body.

Permitting this entry was not something Avon did often or casually, then.  Every gathered sinew attested to the significance of this for Avon, as much as for him.  Blake leaned to him, controlling his impatience, and felt the passage that clasped him give way a little more.  "Yes," Avon murmured.  "All of it.  Deeper, Blake."

The intimacy Avon was allowing -- encouraging -- was, for a man of his privacy, unspeakable, the sweetest triumph Blake could remember.  Groaning with the effort of going slow, he nudged again, and felt the moist heat receive him to the hilt.  Gratefully he gathered Avon to him, embracing his back and wrapping his arms around him, stroking his chest with its feathery-soft hair, his belly, the crease where thigh met groin, the straining erection.  Avon drew a hissing breath and thrust into his hand, the heat that sheathed him contracting so that Blake hissed, too.  Needing this passion, this trust, delighting in Avon's pleasure even more than his own, Blake thought, _Yes, it's true.  I do love Avon. As much as I am capable of loving anyone._   If only that could be enough for Avon.  Maybe it could be.  Avon, too, was damaged.  Blake did not know how, but he, even more than Blake, found intimacy painful.  How much of this astounding closeness did Avon foresee when he set out on this seduction?  Surely, not this much.  Who could have foreseen how right this would feel?

But when he took Avon's rigid cock in his hand, Avon's response was beyond words, only a gasp and exquisite internal tightening that made Blake cry out.  Caressing him, stroking within him, Blake searched deeper into the mystery, thrusting toward the future they could shape together.  In him, Avon would find the key to trust, hope, belief.  In Avon lay his key to winning, to the only future worth all the destruction and pain, all the hope and belief, all this long, desperate struggle.  In this sharing of unimagined intimacy, Blake glimpsed the possibility of sharing that in future himself.  Of becoming whole again.  That through this difficult, unpredictable, unaccountably beautiful man he might be capable again of loving.

Avon's long, yearning moan pierced Blake's heart with longing, and he came, his release within the embracing, living heat drawn out in spasms that repeated and repeated.  It was like weeping years of unshed tears, like laughing when he had never laughed before.  He hovered on the brink of some discovery more momentous than all the rest, some understanding that could free him, and Avon too, if he could only grasp it . . .

±

Avon opened his eyes.  He could have stayed like this forever, lost in the joy of holding Blake again.  The temptation to surrender to sleep was so strong he almost gave way.  But he had not brought Blake here just to hold him.  Cautiously, so as not to disturb him, he raised himself to make his assessment.

The larger man lay sprawled, eyes closed, face peaceful, yet not at rest.  His brows drew down, and his eyes moved under their lids as if examining some object visible only in his mind.  But what?

Avon knew why Blake had agreed to this.  At the beginning, whatever desire he admitted to himself, his conditioning was obviously stronger.  Desire had not been his reason.  The man's manipulative ploy would have been transparent even if it hadn't been the same he had tried five years ago.  Blake, nemesis of the Federation, would do anything to keep him on the Liberator.  Avon, salvation of no one, could not accept him on those terms.  He had played along because it was the only way to get Blake here.  According to Blake, at least once an experience similar to a lost piece of his past had restored his memory.  If the experience was vivid enough.  If anything could revive Blake's recollection of him, it was this.

As he had hoped, the rebel had broken through his conditioning.  Desire, at least, had survived the cataclysm.

If Blake could overcome his conditioned repellence toward his own sex, if the rebel still felt anything at all for him . . .

. . . He would remember that once he had loved enough to give Avon his freedom and his trust.

If Blake _wanted_ to remember.

But perhaps the last thing Blake wanted now was to allow him his freedom.

Though, Avon thought with a twist of irony, it was the last thing this stubborn, intractable rabble-rouser need fear.  If Blake would only give him the straight answer he once had, Avon knew he would follow the man anywhere.

The rebel's eyes ceased their movement.  Yet, he still did not open them.  "Blake," Avon said quietly.  Blake did not respond, unless the deepening of his frown was a response.  Somehow, it seemed too remote for that.

Avon drew in his breath, waiting.  Though he had prepared for it, he dreaded the anger he feared was about to explode.  Perhaps by keeping his secret this inexcusably long year, he had lost Blake for good.  He had considered that many times.  Only, then, he had wanted it to end.

Or, so he had thought.

But if he had thought he could bring remembrance to Blake and remain untouched himself, he had been wrong.  Entirely wrong.  The reawakening of love long denied filled him with such a magnificent abundance of lust and tenderness that it had been all he could do not to let his come spill over Blake's stroking hand.  Still unsatisfied, his sex throbbed at the mere thought of that wanton sweetness.

But he would not come.  Not until he had the completion he needed.  Not until, in anger or wonder, Blake acknowledged what had once been between them.  Having done that, Blake could reject him if he wanted, but he could no longer deny him.

Frowning deeper, Blake opened his eyes.  They focused, looking straight into his own.  "Why didn't you tell me?"

Avon opened his lips, but no words would come.  No explanation, no blame, no sarcasm.  He shook his head.  "I couldn't," he whispered.

"It could have made all the difference to this last year."  To his wonder, Blake's rebuke was gentle, and smiling he pulled Avon down to him.

Enfolded in the arms of his nemesis, his salvation, Avon let down his guard at last.  With a sigh, he clung to Blake, resting his head on the safe harbor of his shoulder.  The warmth of Blake's hands, their touch that treasured him, was enough to make his cock strain fully erect.  "What's this?" Blake asked, bemused.

"What does it look like?"  But his murmured acrimony sounded even to his own ears like an endearment.

"It looks like we'd better see to it at once."  Blake's hand travelled down to his navel, paused there as they both watched Avon's balls tighten eagerly, then with delicious slowness, continued downward, stroking in a languid circle that made Avon gasp with the intensity of his need.

"I wasn't sure about this before," Blake's hand crept lower, "but now I especially want it."  He cupped Avon's balls, rolling them in the palm of his hand.  Avon arched, driving his head back against the pillow.  The flood of sensation and joy made his entire body strain rigid.  Offering the aching shaft and throbbing head of his cock, he moaned a fever of incoherent hunger.  "It's all right, Avon," Blake whispered.  "I'm here."  Avon gasped as he felt not the heat of his hand, but his mouth.

Teeth clenched, he fought with all his might not to surrender to immediate orgasm.  He wanted this consummation, this ecstatic recovery of everything, to last.

But when Blake slid his other hand down his back to the cleft between his buttocks, and entered there, Avon shuddered in a rapturous wash of hot and cold, his body arcing uncontrollably between Blake's mouth and hand, the same embrace that had once trapped him now coaxing him to open, to yield entirely to his vulnerability within Blake's mouth, to Blake's fingers that explored what they had just possessed.  Blake's tongue swept over him, inundating him in current of feverish, shivering abandon, and Blake's fingers probed his core until he writhed as helplessly as the first time, his come bursting from him in a torrent of exquisite, anguished ecstasy.  He heard his cry as if from very far away.

Yet Blake pulled him near, swallowing him with slow, savoring lappings of his tongue, his finger stilled but intimate within him.  Avon rested at last, content to drift without thought, or design, or need.

At last, Blake stirred, stroking his side, following the curve along his hip.  "What a team we'll make now, Avon."

_Naturally_ , Avon thought, with a slight, ironic smile.  Blake would think of that even before their pulse rates returned to normal.

"Why did you wait so long?"  The warm touch moved down his thigh.  "By the way, if you don't mind my asking, how long has it been?"

"You know how long," Avon replied lazily, drifting toward sleep.

"No, seriously," the larger man's voice rumbled in his ear.  "How long have you wanted this, and how did you guess it could work so well between us?"

Avon jolted awake.  He raised up to look at Blake.  Again, he saw the puzzled frown.

The one he had taken for recognition.

Cold flooded his spine, chilling him to the soles of his feet.  Slowly, he asked, "What did you mean, 'Why didn't you tell me?'  Tell you _what_ , Blake?"

Blake opened his eyes.  "That it could be like this between us, of course.  -- You really are rather wonderful, you know."

The universe shattered.  The roar of its destruction throbbed in his head, yet even that was less terrible than the emptiness it left behind.  "Am I?" Avon returned harshly.  Moving out from under Blake's hand, he stood and began throwing on his clothes.  But they did not warm him against this cold, or protect his exposed soul.  Unable to endure proximity for a moment longer, he picked up his boots and hit the door control.  "You're right."  He turned to glare at Blake.  "What happened makes no difference to me.  None whatever."

±

Blake stared at the closing door.  Almost he cried out Avon's name, but what was the use?  Avon was gone.  Having let down his guard just this once, he could not face it.  Having seduced, promised, given, and lacerated to the quick, he had withdrawn.  Back to his own inviolable cabin, the jealously guarded fortress of his privacy.

Blake pressed his face into the pillow, aching with lonely, empty bewilderment, and hurt, and rage.  He had been right, of course.  Everything he had feared for Cally, he now experienced to the full.  What a fool he had been to think that Avon wanted love.  And to imagine he could trust Avon with his secret doubts and fears.  Another moment and he would have been confessing them.  And with what result, desertion, mutiny?

What had he been thinking, trying to see his salvation in Avon?  The only chance for that lay in the attack on Central Control.  Avon, Lindra, his own personal salvation, of what importance were those in the face of the void?  The light was lost to him, never to return.  With that gone, what was left but to tear out the heart of the darkness?

±

 


End file.
